Official Direct Thread: The Social Network

Consider this your official thread for David Fincher's The Social Network. What are your favorite moments, fan theories, characters, camera moves and themes? What's your take on Fincher's take? Join us!

Comments

My theory is that Mark Zuckerberg was behind the whole movie and wanted it made just so that he could be the first one to write himself into the Hollywood history books. He also insisted on the finer points of film being inaccurate and exaggerated in order to taint the waters of any future biopics. From now on if someone attempts to make a Facebook/Zuckerberg film, it will be considered too boring to greenlight.

Also, if Celebrity Deathmatch was still around there definitely would have been a Mark Zuckerberg vs. Jesse Eisenberg fight. It would have been called "The Battle of the Bergs" and ended with Judge Mills Lane being unable to distinguish which Berg is which and then calling it a draw/loss for both.

Welcome Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor! Their addition to the Fincher team has resulted in his 3 best movies I think. Aaron Sorkin is a damned genius; I'm sure you already know this, but he was in the movie playing the interviewer when Mark was clicking his tongue and screwing around. This movie was really the jumping off point for Rooney Mara, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake (as far as movies). I'd love it if next week you juxtaposed Rooney Mara's performance in this and Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I was impressed with her brief scenes here but when i saw GWtDT I knew I was witnessing a star in the making.

I think that this film is Fincher's legacy, and will be remembered for a long long time. On top of being nearly perfect, its subject matter really represents the aughts, and it's crazy to see how far social media has come since Zuckerberg started this in his dorm.

I'm a big fan of this one. One thing I noticed in comparison to a lot of Fincher's other movies is just how dialogue-heavy the first scene is here. In a lot of his other work you get very spare visual introductions without much dialogue, but here it's all dialogue, before you even see picture. It's a Sorkin script, so that makes sense, but it really stands out after watching all of his other back to back.

I also noticed this time around that you start the movie with a Rooney Mara saying that Mark is an asshole and the movie finishes with Rashida Jones saying he's not an asshole, but that he's trying really hard to be one. Interesting bookend there. Though I'm not a fan of that final line.

I also love the Trent Reznor score. It adds so much to the film.

The pacing is excellent and it really clips along. It's amazing how energetic it all feels given that a bunch of it legal proceedings.

I watched a couple of features on the blu-ray and found out some cool stuff:

1. Fincher was talking a lot about digital film-making and how one of the advantages is that you can have desk lamps and stuff actually function as key lights and that most of the set-ups in the film took less than 20 minutes to light.

2. Fincher also talks about Harvard basically shutting them out and not really allowing them to shoot there, so that was quite a challenge.

3. The editors said they had 268 hours of footage to work with. That's insane. Editors never get enough credit for shaping performances.

4. Josh Pence, Armie Hammer's double really deserves a ton of credit as he is basically giving a full performance and the just having his face replaced. It's interesting how this film is essentially dialogue-focused and shouldn't be all that challenging on a technical level especially when compared to some of his previous work, but Armie Hammer as the Winklevoii is a pretty impressive feat to pull off.

Of course there's way more. These are just a few things that stood out to me.

The two-disc edition of the blu-ray has a ton of cool features, a lot of it on the technical side, so I recommend it if you're into that sort of thing.

Lastly here's a /film article I found about the truth behind the movie. Of course, even an article like this is probably disputed by some people, but it's got some interesting tidbits.

Something else I thought was interesting was that Mark Zuckerberg reacted the same way to Winklevii when they said they would help rehabilitate his reputation as Rooney Mara did when Mark said he would take her to parties with people she normally wouldn't get to meet. Both reacted by saying "Oh really, you would do that for me?", sarcastically. It's a small thing but I thought it was interesting.